Optimizing Rockalingua's AWS Infrastructure

Cost savings, improved debugging data management, and a more secure, efficient architecture.

ClientRockalingua

PublishedJanuary 2026

IndustryEducation

Websiterockalingua.com

As Rockalingua’s global audience grew, so did their CloudFront costs and the need for better debugging data management. Stormit helped them unlock major savings and build a more efficient, scalable AWS setup without disrupting their existing architecture.

Rockalingua is an educational website for K-12 Spanish and French teachers and students. It offers interactive games, songs, videos, and printable materials to make language learning fun and effective. Trusted worldwide, Rockalingua empowers teaching with engaging and captivating resources.

From minor tweaks to major improvements

Rockalingua already had great, optimized architecture, but needed our team's help with a few tweaks. Thanks to a free AWS Well-Architected review, we learn more about their specific need without adding unnecessary costs, and, as always, focused on addressing the most important areas for improvement.

Amazon CloudFront Costs

Rockalingua reached out to us for help with the pricing of Amazon CloudFront after noticing a sharp rise in data transfer-out costs. As their user base expanded and content consumption increased, the expenses for delivering content grew significantly. These rising data transfer costs began to strain their budget, prompting them to look for more cost-effective solutions without compromising the quality and speed of content delivery to their global audience.

Storing Debugging Data

The Rockalingua team faced a great challenge in managing and storing debugging data. They used a simple AWS Lambda function to store their data directly in an Amazon RDS database. To keep the database performing, they set up a MySQL Event to delete rows older than one day. However, this approach limited their ability to retain data for longer periods (ideally one to two weeks) because of query performance issues. They considered exporting daily rows to SQL files and storing them in Amazon S3 Glacier, but they were also interested in exploring stronger, more scalable options for data storage, management, and analytics.

Our solution for CloudFront Costs

We analyzed the organization's application requirements and proposed solutions for optimizing data transfer costs. Specifically, we optimized data transfer out to the public Internet. We addressed this issue by providing private pricing for Amazon CloudFront CDN, which led to a 70% reduction in their content delivery expenses.

Our solution for Debugging Data Storage

We suggested using AWS CloudWatch to efficiently manage the debugging data. By logging events directly to CloudWatch from the AWS Lambda function, Rockalingua could store structured JSON logs and use CloudWatch Log Insights to query the data like a SQL database. This setup lets them set a log expiration period, such as two weeks, balancing retention and performance. It also gives them robust tools for data storage and valuable metrics, significantly improving their debugging capabilities.

Well-Architected Review

After a discussion with the Rockalingua team, we saw an opportunity to also run a Well-Architected Review to identify potential risks in their architecture and address them where possible. The Well-Architected Review highlighted Rockalingua's strong alignment with AWS best practices, especially their use of serverless services. With Stormit's help, they strengthened their AWS account security and optimized their database configuration by moving it to a private subnet.

The partnership with Stormit has helped Rockalingua to better manage its AWS Cloud infrastructure, leading to cost savings, improved debugging data management, and a more secure, efficient architecture. These improvements support Rockalingua's mission to provide high-quality educational content.